Life can be challenging! Finding your place in the world you live in can be challenging. Discovering real purpose in life can be challenging. And doesn’t Qoheleth know it. He’s worked hard to consider, research, experience and then to try and put it into words to endeavour to reveal what he has found. But, up to this point, he seems frustrated, because the reality is that just when a person thinks they have it all worked out, something happens and it all unravels again. Unless you are a very unusual person, I’m sure you can identify with this dilemma.
At this stage in this unique book, he appears to be trying to summarize his findings, as frustrating as they may be, and in the following verses he comes back to that key word again – wisdom! Surely, wisdom is the answer to all the unpredictability (or sometimes the monotonous predictability) in life, and if it is, then surely the world should be a better place as the people of this world recognise that truth.
But firstly, he continues to consider the reality that we cannot control most of the circumstances in life. He says:
11 I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.
What we consider should happen surprises us at times. I remember the situation at the 2002 Winter Olympics when Steven Bradbury, an Australian short-track speed skater, won the gold medal in the 1000m event. He was not expected to win. He was the first athlete from Australia and also the first from the Southern Hemisphere to win a Winter Olympic gold medal. What happened shocked everyone watching as this rank outsider was in last place until the entire field ahead of him crashed out on the final corner. Bradbury avoided the carnage and passed all other competitors to finish first over the finish line. (If interested, check it out on You Tube). It seems this race is not only about how fast you are but also how good you are at staying upright! As Qoheleth says: The race is not [necessarily] to the swift… but time and chance happen to them all.
Qoheleth continues:
12 Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come:
As fish are caught in a cruel net,
or birds are taken in a snare,
so people are trapped by evil times
that fall unexpectedly upon them.
Just ask anyone caught up in a war zone (which definitely fits the description of being trapped by evil times) about the truth of these last words here.
And now he returns to the subject of wisdom as he tells what seems to have been a true story:
13 I also saw under the sun this example of wisdom that greatly impressed me: 14 There was once a small city with only a few people in it. And a powerful king came against it, surrounded it and built huge siege works against it. 15 Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But nobody remembered that poor man. 16 So I said, “Wisdom is better than strength.” But the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are no longer heeded.
Wisdom is great, he writes, but even then, we humans are just so fickle, that we too often forget the lesson learnt as time causes the historical event to fade in our memories. Despite this sad truth, he concludes that:
17 The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded
than the shouts of a ruler of fools.
18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war,
but one sinner destroys much good.
Paul in writing to the Corinthian church also spoke of wisdom. Not the so-called wisdom of the world but of the ultimate wisdom that is God’s wisdom. But even here, Paul turns things up-side down, so to speak, in order that all the praise will go to the One who deserves it, and that being the God of all wisdom. So, Paul writes:
26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)
Only in a right relationship with Jesus can we truly know what wisdom is. As Paul says in verse 24, he, Christ [is] the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Worship and Wisdom - Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. 